Washington — Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, said Sunday that he would like to see former Vice President Mike Pence, ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and conservative activist Ginni Thomas appear voluntarily before the panel.
In an interview with “Face the Nation,” Raskin said the panel wants to speak with “anyone who has relevant evidence” about the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“I don’t want to overstate her role,” he said of Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “We’ve talked to more than 1,000 people. But we’d like to hear from Gingrich and we’d like to hear from her too.”
The select committee, which held eight public hearings over the summer, last week formally requested Gingrich appear for a voluntary interview, citing emails the panel said he exchanged with senior advisers to former President Donald Trump, including Jared Kushner and Jason Miller.
It was also revealed that Ginni Thomas sent emails to at least two Wisconsin Republican legislators days after the presidential election pushing them to name an alternate slate of presidential electors to back Trump.
The committee asked Thomas to appear voluntarily before the panel after it learned she corresponded with John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who helped come up with the legal strategy to pressure Pence to unilaterally toss out state electoral votes. Members on the committee also said they could consider issuing a subpoena to Thomas for her testimony
Raskin on Sunday said he believes Thomas has relevant testimony for the committee, and “she should come forward and give it.”
The panel also has been weighing whether to ask Pence to voluntarily come before it, and the former vice president said last month he would “consider” an invitation to participate.
Like with Thomas, Raskin said he believes Pence has information that would be relevant to the committee’s investigation and hopes he would appear voluntarily.
“Vice President Pence was the target of Donald Trump’s wrath and fury and effort to overthrow the election on Jan. 6. The whole idea was to get Pence to step outside his constitutional role, and then to declare unilateral lawless powers to reject Electoral College votes from the states,” he said.
Raskin said the panel is working to have all witnesses testify on their own, but added that “in no one’s case is a subpoena out of the question.” Still, the Maryland Democrat said he assumes Pence would testify voluntarily “the way the vast majority of people have.”
The committee has continued to speak with witnesses throughout the summer and is expected to hold more hearings in the fall, as well as produce a report of its findings by the end of the year.
Raskin said part of the report will include an examination of the money raised from donors under the guise of being used to fight President Biden’s electoral win, but it’s less clear whether that will be a focus of future hearings.
“That was an important degree, an important dimension of everything that was happening,” he said of the money behind the baseless claim the election was stolen from Trump. “This was a Donald Trump operation.”
